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Earth Scientists Express Rising Concern Over Warming

Map shows areas in 2007 that were warmer (reds) and colder (blues) than the mean annual temperature from 1951-1980. (Credit: NASA/GISS)

[UPDATE 2/29: Comments closed out at 1,200.]The American Geophysical Union, the world’s largest organization representing earth and space scientists, put out a fresh statement on the causes and consequences of recent climate change and possible responses.

It’s available online here, and I’ve posted it below. [UPDATE: A Republican Senate staffer has challenged the value of the statement in a comment below, saying it was done by a small committee and doesn’t reflect the views of the broader membership of the AGU. I added a comment to his, offering to highlight in boldface below either endorsements of the statement or “minority reports” by members of the AGU.]

Human Impacts on Climate

The Earth’s climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system — including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons — are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century.

Global average surface temperatures increased on average by about 0.6 degrees Celsius over the period 1956-2006. As of 2006, eleven of the previous twelve years were warmer than any others since 1850. The observed rapid retreat of Arctic sea ice is expected to continue and lead to the disappearance of summertime ice within this century. Evidence from most oceans and all continents except Antarctica shows warming attributable to human activities. Recent changes in many physical and biological systems are linked with this regional climate change. A sustained research effort, involving many AGU members and summarized in the 2007 assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, continues to improve our scientific understanding of the climate.

During recent millennia of relatively stable climate, civilization became established and populations have grown rapidly. In the next 50 years, even the lower limit of impending climate change — an additional global mean warming of 1 degree Celsius above the last decade — is far beyond the range of climate variability experienced during the past thousand years and poses global problems in planning for and adapting to it. Warming greater than 2 degrees Celsius above 19th century levels is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity, and — if sustained over centuries — melting much of the Greenland ice sheet with ensuing rise in sea level of several meters. If this 2 degrees Celsius warming is to be avoided, then our net annual emissions of carbon dioxide must be reduced by more than 50 percent within this century. With such projections, there are many sources of scientific uncertainty, but none are known that could make the impact of climate change inconsequential. Given the uncertainty in climate projections, there can be surprises that may cause more dramatic disruptions than anticipated from the most probable model projections.

With climate change, as with ozone depletion, the human footprint on Earth is apparent. The cause of disruptive climate change, unlike ozone depletion, is tied to energy use and runs through modern society. Solutions will necessarily involve all aspects of society. Mitigation strategies and adaptation responses will call for collaborations across science, technology, industry, and government. Members of the AGU, as part of the scientific community, collectively have special responsibilities: to pursue research needed to understand it; to educate the public on the causes, risks, and hazards; and to communicate clearly and objectively with those who can implement policies to shape future climate.

The union’s statement is firmer and has more policy prescriptions than the one from 2003. It reflects a growing effort by various scientific institutions to clarify what is uncontroversial about climate change. The Geological Society of America came out with its statement on the issue in 2006. While it is more constrained and cautious — as geologists, with their long timescale view of things tend to be — it also accepts the basics:

The Geological Society of America (GSA) supports the scientific conclusions that Earth’s climate is changing; the climate changes are due in part to human activities; and the probable consequences of the climate changes will be significant and blind to geopolitical boundaries. Furthermore, the potential implications of global climate change and the time scale over which such changes will likely occur require active, effective, long-term planning. GSA also supports statements on the global climate change issue made by the joint national academies of science (June 2005), American Geophysical Union (December, 2003), and American Chemical Society (2004). GSA strongly encourages that the following efforts be undertaken internationally: (1) adequately research climate change at all time scales, (2) develop thoughtful, science-based policy appropriate for the multifaceted issues of global climate change, (3) organize global planning to recognize, prepare for, and adapt to the causes and consequences of global climate change, and (4) organize and develop comprehensive, long-term strategies for sustainable energy, particularly focused on minimizing impacts on global climate. (The rest is at the link above.)

Once again, I’d like to think that these groups’ conclusions on the science, along with the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, can help bound, at least a little, the comments on Dot Earth on climate science and its implications.

Right on! Andy. Yes! Yes! Yes! I’m sure I’ll be shaking my head in horror upon the first post that challenges ALL these institutions from SCIENCE AND SPACE but Jesus, what more do non believer’s, denialists need to get the point we need to act NOW? All of us!
This article is great!
Elizabeth Tjader

By the way, Gary Peter’s and Steve Salmony,
Where are you?
Tenny Naumer (Tenny sorry if I misspelled your name) just asked on a blog that just disappeared from the list “where are you Gary Peter’s” and to please come back. I’m seconding that call and asking you both, Gary and Steve, to imagine us standing in a Dot Earth crowd jumping up and down, waving our hands wildly saying, “over here, over here”, come back, please, come back. We need you.
You bring so much wisdom and passion to all our discussions. Hope you come back soon!
Having a hell of a time without you,
Elizabeth Tjader

Thank you for sharing these with us. It’s a great way to establish a reasoned, and reasonable, basis for further discussion. With interest I note the differences in the two statements, from the AGU and the GSA, though I don’t wish to make more of the differences than there is. The AGU statement says that the “not natural” climate changes being recorded–perhaps best exemplified (albeit, I’ll admit, overly simple) by the cascade of recent years all warmer than anything else since 1850–are “best explained” by the increasing accumulation of man-made greenhouse gases and aerosols. While this is a fairly clear statement, when faced with strong opposition and even just an appearance of controversy, even more clarity might be necessary to be as convincing to bystanders as one might like. “Best” is an adjective that discriminates, but does not necessarily widely separate. “Second-best”, in other words, might still be quite good. An additional statement along the lines of “all other explanations fall well short of plausibility” would, it seems to me, greatly strengthen their argument. Of course, at the same time they could include comment addressing the possibility of other factors playing quantitatively
significant roles in warming/climate change. We hear of a dozen or so “major factors”–how much are the other eleven or so to blame? Is their “best explanation” in the same relationship to the rest of the factors as Tiger Woods is to the rest of the golf world, or is it closer to a consensus arrived at by a gaggle of sportswriters and such that Ohio State and LSU are the top two college football teams?

The GSA statement, on the other hand, is both quite conservative–perhaps overly so–while still voicing great concern, and laying the groundwork for discussion about what things we can do, and which of those we should do. (Lomborg makes a vital point when he reminds us that there are also a lot of other maladies afflicting the globe, and that there are both costs of action and lost opportunity associated with any path we choose.)

Often I hear or read someone’s claim that “we can reduce [X] (or increase [Y]) quite readily using currently available technology”, or something similar. But as soon as the discussion drifts in the direction of how one might achieve reductions in X or gains in Y, it begins to sound like the squabbles about the platform at a political convention–lots of heat, to continue with the metaphor offered by others, with oh-so-little light. If only we could harness that heat for use somewhere….

My thoughts are on: 1. the negative “consequences” and possible “problems” due to a warmer climate, 2. the emphasis on organizing planning and developing strategies that will presumably be forced on the public, and 3. the definitive statement that CO2 emmissions have to be cut by 50%.

While it has gotten about one degree warmer since 1900, there is no clear evidence that current climate is anywhere outside of natural variability, and mankind is, at this time, successfully living in climate extremes ranging from the far North to the Equator where climate differences are much more than 3C. I think we should cut CO2 emmissions by building nuclear power plants. But I do not see the need for extreme efforts that will lead to industrial destruction and control over our lifestyles. I do not want to be forced to use mini-florescent light bulbs filled with mercury. If others want to use them it is OK by me.

I’m proud to be a member of AGU, which I joined some 40 years ago, and of my affiliation with its Atmospheric Science section. I support this statement on climate change; which is an example of using facts and numbers to address the question – then weighing that evidence with a scale balance called mathematics.

To ‘armchair’ skeptics I say that we all owe immense gratitude to the truly heroic people who gathered this evidence at the expense of frostbite and oxygen deprivation; with some of whom I’ve been privileged to work and even sometimes help in minor ways. People like Paul Mayewski, Lonnie Thompson, Fritz Koerner, Ian Whillans, John Mercer, Chet Langway and many more. They blazed the trail for the younger ones who’ve followed and who are doing their utmost to understand how things work in our atmosphere.

Many credible people (a growing number) have called global warming the key issue of our times, and many have also called it the key moral issue of our times.

Plenty of scientists have pointed out the problem.

The public is still confused, and the issue does not appear on the lists of “top five” concerns for the upcoming presidential election.

Enough of “business as usual” for the paper. I don’t know about you, but as a parent and human, I don’t feel that “business as usual” is nearly good enough in terms of how our generation considers matters that will impact our kids, future generations, and other species.

If the Times’s coverage of this issue does not substantially improve within a week or so, I’ll be starting to ask about how to get in touch with the owners and senior execs.

I do appreciate, as you know, Dot Earth, but the HUGE gap between the size of this issue and the extent and quality of media coverage is mind-boggling.

What more can I say?

Jeff
[ANDY REVKIN responds: I think we’ve had this conversation before somewhere else in a comment string. The Times remains a NEWSpaper, just as network newscasts focus on the here and now. I’ve done my best in my years here to get us to focus on events unfolding now with potentially momentous long-term impacts, but it’s still a tough slog. And I don’t blame the paper for that, really. And I framed this blog around the broader issue of how we navigate the next two generations with the fewest long-term regrets because I personally see greenhouse gas emissions as PART of the great challenge facing a fast-growing species with a faster-growing footprint. Without new energy options as cheap and reliable as coal we won’t limit warming, nor will we end poverty, nor will we avoid energy tussles/wars. It all comes down to energy, energy, energy, over and over. The climate challenge is PART OF the energy challenge, not vice versa. And we’ve devoted reams of coverage to that question. More coming this year of course, but not focused on climate alone.]

Meanwhile the plutocrats who fund philanthropies and prizes scheme to make space tours a joyride for those with $200,000 to spare for the rubber fuel that injects pollution into the air all the way to the edge of space.

I have a father who is the perfect foil for this discussion. He is a religious conservative who denies global warming, evolution, and gay marriage. If you’ve read Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas, you’ll know him. He is a former teacher and belongs to a union, yet votes against his economics for republicans every time. Every time I try to explain these scientific reports to him, it just won’t get through.

This is a corollary to the national discussion. Increasingly accurate, accepted, and dire warnings have been sounded by the scientific and environmental communities for nearly two decades. To be fair, the discourse in politics is finally steering towards reality. Yet, global warming / the environment still rank among the bottom of voter’s concerns. And even for those voters (us) who rank it at the top, you’d never know it from the hideous lack of coverage by the mainstream television media. (whataretheywaitingfor.com – top 5 pundits – 3 thousand questions – 4 on global warming)

So, the message of catastrophe refuses to be heard, regardless of its factual basis. The book Breakthrough (death of environmentalism) helps to frame this issue. Whatever your take on that book, I think its clear that message has to be positive and integral to succeed. Positive in that clearly shows the benefits to our economy and society. And integral in that the environmental message is inseperable from messages about health care, the economy, transportation, etc. In the book Natural Capitalism the authors speak of a politics of synthesis. We’re all going to have to figure out that the whole thing is interconnected before we can address the “issue” of global warming – which could be defined as symptom of all our other societal issues.

I see the new clean energy economy as the potential for our society to return to the economic growth and social progression of the post war era. Renewable energy provides four times the employment of equivalent fossil energy(see Ecology of Commerce.) Green collar jobs should lift all boats in a rising tide. When people own their own energy (solar panels), and can power their own homes and cars, then they get to keep their money in the local community and increase the local multiplier. When we send money to big oil and king coal, that money gets filtered upward into a top-down corporate hegemony that keeps money out of local communities.

When people feel more secure they tend to be more generous and altruistic. Moving toward a clean energy economy will create positive feedback loops that which will increase our wealth, health, and security.

The question is, can you get this positive message to people without scaring them? I think you have to get scared before they are motivated to re-imagine the world. Yet, you won’t sustain that movement without a positive vision.

one number is the sum of human actions and the signpost of our fate – carbon’s number

Elery Fudge, I am writing this only because you have come back to put incorrect information out there, which is not such a great use of my time, but what to do?

The planet may have been warmer recently, but the rate of increase, particularly over the last 10-20 years) has occurred so rapidly over such a short time period — this is what is not normal. Try, please, to put this simple idea into your knowledge base.

There is also no reason to say that there will be industrial destruction — on what do you base this spurious statement?

I hate to burst the bubble here, but the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) climate ‘consensus’ statement does not hold up to even the lightest scrutiny.

It appears that the AGU Board issued a statement on climate change without putting it to a vote of the group’s more than 50,000 members. Its sweeping claims were drafted by what appears to be only nine AGU committee members. The statement relies heavily on long term computer model projections, cherry-picking of data and a very one-sided view of recent research. As with the recent statements by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the AGU statement is the product of a small circle of scientists (again apparently a 9 member panel according to AGU) who all share the same point of view, and who failed to put their statement to a vote of the AGU members on whose behalf they now claim to speak. As such it amounts to nothing more than a restatement of the opinion of this small group, not a ‘consensus’ document.

Bottom line, this new AGU statement appears to in no way represent the views of the AGU rank-and-file members. As previously stated, we know both AMS and NAS had only two dozen or so board members vote on their ‘consensus’ statement. And the Canadian Academy of Sciences reportedly endorsed a “consensus” global warming statement that was never even approved by its governing board. consensus’

Further, the media hyped UN IPCC Summary for Policymakers in 2007 only had 52 scientists participate!

We must be honest about now these ‘consensus’ statements are produced. The only way rank-and-file AGU members can weigh in is to make comments to the panel. This is not ‘consensus.’

To read the voices of scientists from around the world, please check out the U.S. Senate report detailing over 400 scientists who recently dissented from man-made global warming fears. (Note: 400 plus scientists are more than 8 times the number of scientists who participated in IPCC Summary For Policymakers)

Marc Morano
U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee
[ANDY REVKIN comments: So let’s consider this Dot Earth string a place for the AGU, GSA, AMS, NAS, AAAS “minority report,” as well.

Will members of those organizations please pass this link around and weigh in here on whether they disagree with these rather mildly worded summaries? And of course those who endorse their groups’ statements should feel free to comment here as well.

I’ll start the ball rolling by sending a note to some scientists I know. Mark, you do the same. Everyone else, please do this, too. But respondents should identify themselves by name, with affiliations, if they find their organizations’ summaries faulty, or not. UPDATE: I’LL HIGHLIGHT THE RESPONSES OF PEOPLE WHO CLEARLY IDENTIFY THEIR AGU, AMS, ETC AFFILIATION.]

Please forgive me if I am telling you something that you already know, but you can get back to the entire lists of all the posts by clicking on “Back to front page” right under the big blue “Dot Earth” at the top left of this column.

Where is Steve Salmony? I can imagine that he might be somewhat exhausted.

Where I get stuck, though, is the last sentence of the AGU statement. “Members of the AGU, as part of the scientific community, collectively have special responsibilities… to educate the public on the causes, risks, and hazards….”

It’s not just education. Somehow, we have to get the public to be cognizant of their choices, and motivated to make different ones. And while one could argue that this idea is implicit in the AGU’s statement, I would argue that implicit isn’t working!

Perhaps this is related to the slow drip concern that has floated in and out of this blog, but very few people have “fight global warming” tucked in between grocery shopping and doing laundry on today’s to-do list. Further, many of the things that people can do to fight climate change (putting on a sweater instead of turning up the thermostat, turning lights out when leaving a room, etc, etc) will never make any to-do list.

Climate change is the cumulative effect of thousands upon thousands of individual decisions we collectively have made daily at home, at school and at work over generations. We can’t just mindlessly leave this to others, hoping “they” can engineer or regulate our way out of our problem in the time horizon that is available to us.

Since 1990’s there has been a continuous increase in global average temperatures .The prime cause may not be greenhouse gases but rather the increase in Stratospheric joule heating[ electrical heating ] caused by the increase in solar wind intensity or the number of high velocity solar wind days per year. “Sprites” and jets have been found to transfer electricity between the ionosphere and storm clouds. So electricity is known to be transferred 65 km directly to our atmosphere. This joule heating may extend all the way to our lower atmosphere and possibly to the very surface of the planet. Here we define the increased solar wind intensity as increased number of days per year with high solar wind velocity of 500 km/sec or more. .Quiet wind is closer to 275 -350 km/s.

Solar wind dynamic pressure and the Joule heating are directly related. Solar dynamic pressure or pulse is directly proportional to the density of the wind times the wind velocity squared. Thus doubling the solar wind velocity [ which is what happens during these solar wind peaks of 500-1000km/s and more increases the dynamic pressure pulse four fold, increases the electrical field-aligned currents, which then increases ionospheric Joule heating which contribute to global warming. The magnitude of electric field in the atmosphere is proportional to the nearness of
magnetopause to the Earth..

Data supplied by the University of Maryland and SOHO shows a very recent solar wind velocity spike during December 2007. It is no wonder that the year 2007 was tied with 1998 as the second warmest global year. There were 93 days of high solar wind during 2007, the 4th highest on record[1995-2007] Already during JANUARY 2008 we have had 13.5 high velocity solar wind days . The average is only 6.3 per month.
There has been a steady increase in the number of high velocity solar wind days during Decembers from 1995-2007 .Many of us have noticed the increase in higher temperature anomalies during the winter month. This may explain the reason.

The high velocity solar wind days are analogous to the number of days in a year that our planet’s furnace and fan were on and set on HIGH. The global temperature anomaly is what your thermostat reads as the actual temperature.

The average number of high solar wind days per year for the three years [1995-1997] around the last solar minimum was 42. The average number of high solar wind days 10 years later at the current solar minimum for the three years [2005-2007] is 92 , more than double .This may account for why temperature anomalies have also gone up from those around 0 .30 to 0.60 due to joule heating.

Good solar wind data only goes back to November 1994 otherwise I would go back earlier to the 1980’s when the so called “manmade global warming” started. I continue to state that that the prime cause [80%] of global warming is the sun. Man made greenhouse gases contribute to the warming but only about 20%.

Some scientists have commented that there has been no change to the sun since the 1950’s. This may not be true.s As the magnetic fields of the sun increase, so do the electrical fields and associated joule heating.

Scientists in the UK reported that the measurements of the near-Earth interplanetary magnetic field reveal that the total magnetic field leaving the sun has risen by a factor 1.4 since 1964. Using surrogate interplanetary measurements, they found that the rise since 1901 is by a factor of 2.3. This change may be related to chaotic changes in the dynamo that generates the solar magnetic field. “We do not yet know quantitatively how such changes will influence the global environment” they said.
There may be another source of global warming since about 1988, namely weather modification experiments and similar weaponry techniques. See the following web page. //www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7561
The unusual hot weather of 1998 could come from weather modification experiments and the close approach of comet Hale Bopp which pumped extra solar electricity into the sun and to our earth

I applaud and support all the efforts to reduce the use of fossil fuels and when this is not possible, the use of latest and cleanest fossil fuel technologies to clean up the pollution associated with greenhouse gases.

It is very odd and very noticeable that the issue of pollution as opposed to global warming is rarely now mentioned by all the scientific bodies engaged in the climate change debate.

I merely wish to point out that manmade greenhouse gases may not be the prime cause behind global climate change. The facts of this will become apparent in the near future. The sun and our planet are changing due to causes that are not all of man’s making but we can reduce the pollution that we are causing.

Tenny,
(sorry all..I don’t know some of the people personally so I must respond this way…but this also might be helping other’s who are as dumb as I am when it comes to computers and accessing information)
Thank you. No I did not know how to find the older blogs.!
Another question….how do we find out who is paid to spread climate falsities and if we find that information out and can prove it, are we allowed to expose it here and not fear a lawsuit for slander? (thinking of some of those fine, pathetic lawyers who also get paid to be slimy)
Elizabeth Tjader

About 1/2 of the rise in temperature this past century occured between 1900 and 1940. The rest of the rise has been over the last 27 years between 1980 and 2007. If you want to focus on 10 to 20 years you are talking about weather not climate. And if you do want to focus on the short term, regarding the last 9 years, there has been no statistically significant rise at all. Pointing out the one degree rise this past century is not misinformation on my part.

Andy – Thank you for bring this issue up. There is actually considerable diversity of views on the role of humans within the climate system. The AGU (and AMS) policy statements are actually written by just a few individuals. While this captures their views, it is incorrect and inaccurate to present these policy statements as a consensus of these professional organizations. These policy statements certainly do not represent my views on this issue.

Readers of your weblog should also visit my Climate Science weblog [//climatesci.org/], where other viewpoints are presented, including that of a 2005 National Research Council report entitled

Marc Moreno is correct that the statement is approved by the AGU council. However, it should be noted that the AGU council is elected by the members of the AGU. Thus, they are mainstream scientists and their views represent the mainstream opinion of the AGU.

There are, of course, a few dozen credible scientist skeptics out there, but they pale in comparison to the 50,000+ members of the AGU.

And for context, consider that the AGU’s statement is just one of a spate of similar statements by other expert organizations, such as the AMS, AAAS, U.S. National Academy, etc.. Even the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, while not exactly embracing the connection between carbon dioxide and climate, cannot bring themselves to contradict it.

And, for the record, I’m a member of the AGU and AMS and agree with both organizations’ statements.

Marc Morano’s statements used to make me angry, but in this case, all I can do is laugh. He appears to be nothing more than Sen. Inhofe’s court jester.

No where in this post does Andy use the word consensus, and neither do the AGU and GSA statements. The briefest glance at the links shows authorship right at the top of each page; the AGU statement comes from the council and the contributors to the GSA statement are listed by name.

And to accuse the AGU of cherry-picking data when the map at the top of this post bleeds orange, red and worse is just laughable. NASA’s maps are similar for 2006, 2005, 2004….

The Award Winning Environment & Public Works Website (the Gold Mouse Award made possible by JFK School of Government At Harvard University and the National Science Foundation See: //epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=79541c08-802a-23ad-4789-56296e2d061b ] wrote all about the film “Everything’s Cool.” Excerpt from January 26, 2007: The Weather Channel’s top climate expert — already under fire for advocating the scientific decertification of global warming skeptics — is one of the stars of a new politically charged global warming documentary that, according to the film’s website, accuses the U.S. government of “criminal neglect” and blames “right-wing think tanks” for helping to “defeat climate-friendly legislation.” The supercharged political message in the new documentary “Everything’s Cool,” which prominently features the Weather Channel’s climate expert Heidi Cullen, appears to conflict with the network and Cullen’s recently stated goal of not taking “a political position on global warming.”
Full report on film here: //epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=5CC23ACD-802A-23AD-4F6A-DED3B52FE522

Mr. Morano, given that you have often used your government title as part of your posts, and given previous dialogues here on Dot Earth, I would like to point out that you have not yet answered the very simple questions asked on a recent Dot Earth blog post, as far as I can tell.

In the interest of transparency, as you know, I asked three short questions in post #191 (January 15), with a reminder in post #201 (January 15), of Andy’s post “The Road from Climate Science to Climate Advocacy”, dated January 9. And, other Dot Earthlings have shown interest in having the answers to those questions as well.

Before I, personally, can digest and contemplate your future posts, in context, or take them seriously, I’ll need to have those answers. I can only speak for myself.

It also seems that you have had time to send notes to private individuals (or at least one) who have blogs related to the environment and sustainability. Given that you have that time, as a member of the U.S. government, and (again) in the interest of transparency, will you please be kind enough to answer those three questions. As a citizen, I request that you do so. Today.

I am also still waiting for the response that Senator Inhofe’s office promised me.

I have been a member of the American Meteorological Society for about 30 years, and I found it very disturbing that the board of the AMS issued a position statement on the matter of AGW without consulting or polling the membership in some fashion. I have studied the matter extensively for the past 7 or 8 years, and firmly belive that what we are witnessing is simply climate variability that is well within the limits of what has transpired in the past. Simply put, the mathematical correlation between an increase in atmospheric CO2 and temperature is very weak. By contrast, the correlations between temperature and periodic fluccuations in both ocean temperatures and the solar cycles are very strong. If individuals truly interested in this topic don’t, at a minimum, research the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the various solar cycles and their relationship with changes in temperatures, then I am afraid those individuals are no more interested in knowledge than a lazy 4th grader…they drink the Kool-Aid, but they won’t do their homework.

For Elizabeth Tjader…….how do we find out who is paid to spread climate falsities and if we find that information out and can prove it… might be very hard to do; you are essentially implying conspiracy of some sort.
It should be much easier to find out who is getting paid by whom; but not what they are supposed to do for that pay.
I would think that information on Government grants paid for people to do any sort of climate research would be public knowledge available through the FOI act. Finding out what corporations are paying for grants to people who do climate research might be more difficult.
Then I am sure there are people who have grant money from both industry and Government.
I would guess that so long as you don’t accuse people of things you can’t prove; you would not have a problem exposing who gets paid by whom.

For the record, I don’t receive a dime from either side of this issue; and both sides collectively don’t have enough money to buy my opinion.

I’d like to also mention that the list of 400 scientists was assembled by Marc and his boss (mostly Marc). He left out of the cherry-picking process thousands of other people who are more qualified than he to assess the qualifications of each person on the list and the implications of their particular findings. So that’s just 2 people. Well just one. By Marc’s reasoning, this scrutiny I just applied completely negates the value of that list of 400 scientists.

If you believe in a just God, Marc, I wonder how you square so egregiously and serially violating the 8th Commandment.

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By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 -- in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship -- to explore ways to balance human needs and the planet's limits.